Researchers identify possible key to slow progression toward AIDS

One of the big mysteries of AIDS is why some HIV-positive people take more than a decade to progress to full-blown AIDS, if they progress at all. A group of investigators from the Multi-Center AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), housed within the UCLA AIDS Institute, may have uncovered the key to this variation. It is a killer T-cell immune response that occurs early on in HIV infection and targets a section — or epitope — of the HIV protein called IW9.